


planetary nebulae (and all things that follow)

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Brief suicidal ideation, Character Study, Crowley Has PTSD (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Traumatized Crowley (Good Omens), World War II, and a lot of them are about stars, crowley has a lot of feelings, he is a wee bit dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 05:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20130448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: planetary nebula, n. remnants of stars which are too small to undergo supernova explosions.Seven thousand years ago, Crowley created the stars (And so on and so forth).





	planetary nebulae (and all things that follow)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [saint helena doves and other flightless birds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19664794) by [Nimravidae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae). 

> *somewhat inspired by, to be clear.

Once upon a time, an angel named Raphael built the stars.

He formed nebula with a breath, created supernovae with a thought, built constellations around ideas around stars, and he was _so proud._ He showed God what he built, he thinks, which is impossible but doesn't feel like it sometimes, because he can remember Her love, pulsing under his skin as he waved a hand and showcased his greatest achievement.

These days Raphael, or Crawly, or Crowley, or whatever you wish to call him, doesn't have many great achievements. He has plants that he can never love like stars, and people he can never love like plants, and a brain he can never love like people, but there isn't much else, really.

Most nights there is not anything in particular, just Crowley and his slowly dying population of burning children. Well, him, his children, and convenient high places to see from.

But never to jump off of. He always wishes they were launch points. But you can't leave the airport without an aeroplane, when you are stuck on the ground, waiting for a flight that's been cancelled for 6000 years.

Sometimes, Aziraphale joins him. Sits up on the roof during the night and helps Crowley scoop up the stars in his fingers, puts a gentle hand on his shoulder when they sift through like stars always will.

Crowley never cries for his stars, even when they fall out of the sky because demons do not cry over spilt milky ways and tumbling balls of gas. He does not cry, but he does curl up on the softest surface available, stares into the distance and drags fingernails across his arms until he starts to breathe again.

He doesn't need to breathe, as a demon, technically. But Crowley isn't terribly fond of demon things and he loves breathing, in the problematic way he loves so many things.

He doesn't need to love, as a demon, technically. But Crowley isn't too good (Or, bad) at being a demon, and he has always loved far too much. He loves his car, and his house, and his hair, and sunglasses, and music, and comedies, and Aziraphale and stars. Altogether too many things to love, too much space in his head taken up by making time to love all of them, individually.

Maybe that's why he's such a bad demon, Crowley thinks one day. Not enough room in his head taken up hating things.

So he resolves to be hateful, from then on. He was never a good angel, but he can be a good demon if he tries hard enough, he thinks.

It's much easier to hate than to love, Crowley knows. Why else would God have cast them all out, if not for something to hate?

He starts hating with ease, takes to it like a duck to water. He hates rules, he discovers in 1850. Hates people, he discovers when an author he would never admit to liking died*. Hates war, he discovers when he spends months in the trenches sewing discourse. Hates peace, even more, he discovers when a truce is called and everyone talks and laughs and smiles for a day and then goes right back to killing each other.

The war gives him lots to hate, really. Very useful to him, the Great War. Because after it, he starts hating in abundance; Loud noises and fireworks and popping sounds and screaming kettles and mud and people who don't talk loud enough for ears slightly deafened by sirens that he never gets the will to heal.

He gets a notebook, during those months, and he draws out a galaxy of constellations with a hand that shakes so violently almost none of the pictures come out right, and at first it's helpful but he keeps making constellations from things he wants to stop seeing (A gas mask, a grenade, a rifle, a finger, he can't stop) and he just ends up burning it so it's not much use to anyone after all.

All in all, a very useful thing, the first war.

The second one, not so much.

He doesn't fight in this one, directly. Just observes. Much easier to observe, really. He has to work at a death camp, once, which isn't pleasant, even though he's just a cook. One day though, he does cause just enough anger that the prisoner's riot, and if the guards find all of their guns jammed, he never reports it.

(He will tell Aziraphale one day, quietly and drunkenly, calls it the only good thing he has ever done. He even says he's proud of it, in a tinny, disbelieving voice, having long since forgotten what it was like to be proud of something.)

He comes back to London as soon as possible. He didn't really fight in this one, so he doesn't get the same treatment he received after he came home from the first war. Though, he expects even if he did fight in this one his homecoming would be much more welcoming than the spitting at his feet and the protesters, ironically enough, calling him a demon.

Anytime he finds himself thinking about either of the wars for too long, he traces the outline for a new galaxy in his head, lets the game of connect the dots between stars calm his mind.

He saves Aziraphale's life, somewhere in there. And then he saves Aziraphale's books, which is almost as stupid.

He reconciles with himself, that night as he lays in his bed. He hates enough things that he can afford to love a few. They cancel each other out well enough. So here and there he steals a book, not because he wants to steal it, but because he wants to read it. And that's alright. It's perfectly fine. And if stealing sometimes involves leaving money on the counter, then so be it. And if sometimes he ends up stealing from Aziraphale's bookshop, so be that, as well.

And if perhaps, stealing involves staying two hours for tea and chatting, then it's okay as long as he takes the book before he leaves.

Is it still stealing if you return it when you've finished reading?

Yes, Crowley decides resolutely. Of course, it is.

"You're a shitty demon, Crowley," Ligur slurs one day, high off his ass on human painkillers after getting hit by a car and being transferred, unconscious, to a human hospital. Crowley is sent to retrieve him, has put one of Ligur's arms around his shoulder when Ligur says it. "You're too _human_. Shouldn't've even Fell." He says it like it's an insult, and it is.

Crowley throws Ligur off of him, lets his fellow demon crumple to the ground without his support, and hisses. "Sssshut up!"

"'s true! You know it!" Ligur attempts to get up and then crumples to the ground again. Crowley kicks him in the ribs as he feels the panic rising. Ligur and he never knew each other before falling, but he could have heard something.

Michael, before they became such a massive prick, had told him once that he was one of the most tragic of the Fallen. "You were so bright," They whispered into Eden's perfect night breeze. "I wish you could have stayed."

And Crawly had stood there, back turned, shaking and digging his nails into his skin. He could have said something, perhaps, if it was not his old favourite sibling that spoke so quietly, so profoundly, like the words had a physical form, like they were birds that were being let loose into the night.

Like they could change anything at all.

Crawly had turned into a snake, in response, and resolved to hunt down those words, those feathered creatures, and destroy them before they could break him apart.

He liked to twist that story sometimes, turn it into Michael insulting him and him quipping back and then Michael saying something about hoping the birds eat him, and that that's why birds hunt snakes.

He never tells anyone the real version, because he's afraid it will make Hell remember who he was, once. Before Crowley was Crowley, and before Crowley was Crawly when Crawly was named Raphael.

He is afraid that they will look at him and see the stars he built, the universe he breathed into existence, the light that used to overflow from him like he was his own personal supernova. He doesn't know why he is afraid of them remembering that. He likes to think it is because it would be humiliating, likes to nurse that thought when the memory starts to be too painful.

He considers, only briefly, that he doesn't want anyone to remember because he is afraid of making it real. Of making his old holiness something tangible, something he could have had if he had made better decisions. He knows he wouldn't have liked to be an angel all his life. Wouldn't have been able to stand the stiffness and conformity and politeness.

But when he thinks, late at night, about the hollowed-out feeling in his chest where Gods love was, once, where Her compassion used to warm him and fill him up like only brandy can imitate now, he finds himself terribly lonely. Because if he was in Heaven, then he would be allowed to love whatever he damn well pleased.

But he wouldn't have been allowed to hate, either.

Sometimes, in moments that Crowley tries very hard to forget, he wishes that he were human. Or, not human, as he is whatever the opposite of infatuated might be with the idea of a lifespan, but rather a regular old immortal. Not forced to debate over good or evil like he does, but just existing, free to love and hate exactly as many things as he wished with no thought at all to balancing the two out.

Normally, after these moments, Crowley removes his sunglasses, stares in the mirror for quite a long while, and reminds himself how useless it is to fantasize about alternate realities. He goes back to it immediately after, but it is the thought that counts.

So, when Ligur looks up at him with that dazed, medication-hazy expression that insists with a sneer that he should have been human, that he's too much of a good guy to be a proper demon, Crowley kicks him twice more for good measure and then leaves.

Simply walks away, heading toward Aziraphale's before he quite knows he's doing it. He has better brandy, Crowley insists to himself as he knocks on the door. That's why you're here.

Aziraphale gives him a plant, that night after he does not say what's wrong. "I just don't have time to take care of it, dear. You should keep it."

So Crowley does.

He doesn't know how to be nice to things, though, so he's mean instead. He yells and he threatens and he gathers more plants. He instils fear into them and drills them to perfection.

"Well, _I _don't think you're a bad person, Crowley," Aziraphale says one day. Crowley doesn't know how to be gentle, so he's rough instead, throws his friend against the wall and hisses between teeth that will not separate.

Crowley would rather be nice than mean, really, but he does not remember how. He knows how to be good in the way one knows how to say a word without hearing it, only having seen its form on paper. He can spell it, he can recognize it, but his lips can't form around it, and whenever he tries it always comes out wrong.

He could take the time to learn, if he really wanted to. Crowley could sit down with Aziraphale and he has no doubt that his friend would teach him how to be kind, how to shape his lips around a good deed, how to make his skin glow with all the being-a-good-person-light that the angel always projects.

But he does not want to learn. He is so scared of what will happen if he does.

There's an old joke somewhere, about a demon who tried to get into Heaven on good behaviour. It gets less funny every time he thinks about it, and lately, it makes him feel sick. He can't stop telling it though, even if it becomes more difficult every time.

He always forgets how the joke ends, right before he finishes it.

He tells the joke to Aziraphale, once, in 1987, and the Angel must sense something because he chides Crowley and tells him to get some more sensitive jokes. He doesn't tell the joke anymore, and eventually, he forgets the whole thing.

He tries to remember it one day when he meets a new human and finds that he can't. It's not as bad a thing as he thought it would be, not remembering the joke. If he doesn't know how it ends, he can always imagine it'll be different if he tries it.

One night, drunk and loose-lipped, Crowley talks.

"Stars are- Stars are great. I created the stars. Did you know that? Before I was a... a demon. I made all of the stars." Aziraphale looks up at him from his spot on the floor, back pressed to the couch Crowley is lying on, watching the demon stretch his hands up and move them as he tells his story, like he's drawing the stars again as he talks.

"No, I did not know that, Crowley." His voice is tighter than it normally is, and even in his hazy state, Crowley can feel something wrong.

"What is it, Angel?" His words slur heaviest around the s' like they always do when he drinks, a slow progression back to serpentine. He has scales, even in his human form. He doesn't think anybody knows that. Winding up from the inside of his thigh and around his waist, black and cold to the touch.

Sometimes, when Crowley is very drunk, he feels like his soul is covered in scales. He doesn't know if he has a soul though, so he can never be sure. It makes him itch when he thinks about it.

"It's just, I never knew you... Before you Fell. I've never really thought of what you were like as angel, truth be told." He shoulders are a bit tense and hunched in, in a way that means he's upset but his stiff upper lip attitude won't allow him to express it.

Crowley thinks that that's the main reason he would have never gotten by as an angel. He feels things too fully, too big, to ever shove them down like that. He can act cool and nonchalant when he isn't, but he's always bursting with it, even if it's an act. Crowley has always felt things so much, has always been spilling at the seams with something his whole existence.

Whether it's love or pride or hate, he's always been in a perpetual state of overflow.

"Did it hurt?" Aziraphale asks suddenly, jerking Crowley out of his head.

"Did what hurt?"

"When you Fell." Aziraphale gets a look like he's still curious but regrets asking.

"More than anything you could possibly imagine. Like your whole being is being torn into shreds, boiled in lava, and then forced back together again." He says it in a quiet, haunted voice. He will regret this when he is sober.

Aziraphale probably says something, but Crowley can't do much other than stare at the ceiling and not feel a single thing at all. Eventually, he falls asleep.

He wakes up before Aziraphale and leaves as soon as he can. He doesn't talk to his friend for a while, after that, and even when they start talking again, neither of them ever bring it up.

Part of Crowley thinks it wasn't real. The rest of him knows that Aziraphale would have done something much worse than just speak if it was all a part of Crowley's imagination.

Three decades later, after many things have happened, they will talk about it. Crowley standing on his balcony, leaning forward, gaze locked onto the sky.

"I made so many," He starts, when he hears the balcony door open. "But Orion was always my favourite. Pity you can't see him from London."

"Did you enjoy it?" Asks Aziraphale. "Making the stars, I mean."

"Oh yes, more than anything. Was the one thing I was good at."

"I'm sure you were good at many things," Aziraphale huffs, moving beside him.

"Not really."

It takes thirty years for them to talk about it again though, which is probably why they're so fucked because they can't communicate for the life of them.

In 1996, Crowley meets a priest. He didn't go out seeking one, mind you. He _is_ a demon, after all. But he does meet one none the less, in a coffee shop where he is, for a reason he does not understand, drinking coffee.

The man is sitting next to him at the counter. "Is your coffee watery as well?" He whispers conspiratorially, putting a hand in front of his grinning lips.

"Don't think so," Crowley replies. "Don't really drink coffee much."

"Ah," The man says in acknowledgement. He has a thick Irish accent that makes him sound a lot younger and more friendly than he probably is. "Me neither. Don't normally need caffeine, but I felt like it was necessary today." Crowley laughs a little, despite himself.

"Anthony J. Crowley." He holds out a hand.

"Father Jack Roberts." The Priest grips the hand tightly and shakes it. A long time ago, handshakes had a real purpose. You shake the hand, the weapon falls out of the sleeve or it doesn't. Now, handshakes are just formal things. He heard a human say once that you could tell the quality of a person's character by the strength of their handshake.

It's all horseshit, of course. That doesn't stop the instinctual trust that Crowley feels upon shaking Father Jack's hand. There's the accompaniment to the trust, of course, which is fear because Crowley has had enough run-ins with self-righteous Priests to know that attempted exorcisms are much more painful when you're not possessing anyone.

That doesn't stop him from meeting Father Jack again. Stuff like fear of death has always been shit at stopping him, anyways.

"Do you think we're all here for a reason?" Crowley asks one day as his coffee grows cold in his cup.

"Why do you ask?" Father Jack intones as he takes another bite of his biscuit.

"No reason." There is a reason, there are so many reasons, but Crowley can't exactly share them with a priest. What can he say, other than he's had a falling out with his best and only friend, who is an Angel, who is mad at him because of something he didn't do, but rather something that humans did? He wants to ask, truly, how you convince an Angel that the stabbing in Berkeley was just humans being humans, with no kind of demonic interference whatsoever.

But that's not really an appropriate question to ask a human, so he doesn't.

"Well then, the answer is yes; I do think we're here for a reason. Whatever it is. I imagine not knowing is just part of the excitement." At this point, Father Jack reaches across the table and places a hand on Crowley's shoulder. The demons head snaps up in surprise. "Whatever happens, Anthony, I believe it's for a reason."

_What a nice thought_, Crowley jokes to himself, _to believe in reason._

Father Jack dies next September, but Crowley doesn't really want to stop and think about it, so he doesn't. He takes all of the feelings Jack had ever instilled in him, every word and kind gesture and footing of the bill, unpacks it out of its little box in his brain, and then uses the materials he gets to draw Jack a little constellation. He puts it on a real piece of paper, for once, prints out the connection of stars in the shape of a coffee mug, and puts it in a safe in a secret corner of his apartment. He lays down the drawing gently, among the other pieces of paper, among the notes and wishes and things he keeps meaning to mail Aziraphale but never does, and then locks the safe.

He will open it when he is ready to feel grief again. But right now, he isn't. He doesn't know when he will be, to be totally honest. He's been packing away constellations into boxes since Rome, and he has yet to open a single one.

He will be ready one day, he tells himself, like he has for thousands of years.

He doesn't know what he's holding out for, at this point. Maybe he's waiting to be able to create another nebula in their honour.

He might as well just throw away the box then because that's never going to happen.

He does not throw away the box. He never manages to figure out why.

Eleven years later, Crowley finds the Anti-Christ. And really, he should be happy, because he is a demon and he should be rooting for demon things, like fire and brimstone and the apocalypse. He's just not... _ready, _yet. He hasn't had enough time.

He calls Aziraphale, at a loss of what else to do.

He shouldn't really care about the world in the way he does. But Crowley isn't a very good demon, so that does not stop him. Maybe he should just let the world burn like it was meant to. Maybe he should just let God continue with Her Great Plan, do what he was always supposed to when he was an Angel but could never manage: Shut up and stop asking questions.

He doesn't want to see the Earth gone, though. He wants to build more stupid highways, do more shitty dances, wear different glasses and grow out his hair and maybe kiss Aziraphale if he can make the time for it.

He should let Hell fight. He should help Hell win.

He should, but that doesn't mean he has to.

He has a brief moment of confliction, for only a single second, before all sense of duty evaporates.

He places his foot firmly on the accelerator of the car that he shouldn't love as much as he does and drives off. One thought is what changes his mind, playing on repeat in his head as he drives, the thought that makes him want to save the world.

Hell will have a terrible view of the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> *The author Crowley will never admit to liking is Oscar Wilde, by the way. AJC relates to Dorian a little too much.
> 
> Edit: This was totally inspired by that one Good Omens Constellations animatic. Also please give me comments they water my crops and clear my skin.


End file.
